Guam public sector employees receive retroactive pay

A total of 2,150 government of Guam executive branch employees are expected to receive money today for eight months worth of retroactive pay raises, Gov. Eddie Calvo's office announced yesterday.

"Today, General Pay Plan employees will get their full salary increase," the governor further states in his column in today's Pacific Daily News. "It is a retroactive payment covering the period from February 2014 to Sept. 30."

The checks were printed yesterday and total $2 million, according to the governor's office.

The amount of the checks ranges from as low as $5, due to termination of service in February, to $5,500, the governor's office stated.

The average amount of the check is $500, the governor's office stated.

The pay raises being paid today for General Pay Plan employees are about one-third of the more than 6,000 GovGuam employees and supervisors whose pay raises were authorized in a 2011 law.

The General Pay Plan category doesn't include nurses, law enforcement personnel and educators, whose pay-raise classifications fall under a different category.

GovGuam pay raises weren't immediately implemented because GovGuam was short of funds to do so.

"I'd like to thank you for your patience," the governor's column states. "It allowed me to address other financial issues that, without your hard work, probably wouldn't have been done."

The Guam Department of Education's non-teaching employees still haven't been paid their pay raises under the same law. As of yesterday afternoon, DOE received word that today's payments won't include non-teaching DOE employees, said DOE Deputy Superintendent for Finance Taling Taitano.